co-op server

[McTc]

What you guys think about one password protected server for the community players to work together.

This means one company where everyone join in to work on one goal. instead of compeating with eachother, you need to work together to reach the goal. etc citybuilding 50k city or something.

Why password protected?
First there would be allowed players who have mastered some key things in the game. who know to use shared orders only, know the basics of signaling, who know why it's importand to place signs if working together and so on. if you prove yourself in normal server to veteran player/staff, you can get access to co-op.

Since it would be limited access server, there could be easily added some mods(because if you don't know how to get mods, that probably aint the place for you anyway)

the goal and maybe mods on server could be changed weekly, or upon community request.

[imus]

So you're saying something like what they do at openttdcoop but with an actual goal in mind other than "building one big network that transports everything". I like the overall idea but don't know how it would work in practice.

Some things I'd like to know first:
1) how do you get that password? Do you need to ask for it on IRC like in openttdcoop?
2) how do you decide who is allowed to join in the first place?
3) what kind of goals are you thinking about?

1 and 2 are easy if you only allow admins but that I don't think that is your intention
the reason for (2) is that different players have different play styles. Even if you know the game and know how to build a decent network. For example how big to make your corners, how much terraforming etc...
(3) could be interesting. Of course we need a big goal. I could see something where you need to transport a lot of different things in huge amounts. Like your 50k CB example that's going to need a lot of pax/mail/food/goods/... Or a goal that says a certain amount of EACH recourse transported in 1 year. Or in total ...

[alex879ro]

Co-op server would be something easy to implement. We already have the co-op plugin which only allows one company and also it allows only player with a certain score and achievement to join it. However, the coop server failed. In the weeks or months it was implemented it had max 1 player or even less.

I have seen conversations between admins about the posibility of re-implementing coop server but so far nothing was decided yet. Perhaps one of the admins who was talking about it can see this post and write his ideas here.

About your idea with a password: Players talk with one another so a password would be easily found out by everybody
About the changing of the coop goal: we haven`t managed yet to decide a goal that would bring players to such a server

It sounds nice as an idea, when you think about playing and knowing that others can also touch what you did, most players hesitate about it..

[McTc]

first to imus

with difrent mods, there are alot of difrent goals to be achieved. long story short, yes the idea is something similar to openttdcoop.
you can do citybuilding, 50k, 100k, 500k all is reasonable.
you can do cargo goals, 100k produced goods in single factory, it takes huge ammount of effort, but it's reachable.
you can even do % of transported goods from all sources(all primary, secondary)

the list can go on and on, just see how many difrent plays have openttdcoop done.

Yes everyone have difrent play style, but it's not hard to do some ground rules, about signaling, signing and so on. most experienced players know how to anyhow, just need the guidlines on how to act in co-op.


About geting in, irc and password is one option.
some whitelist system, as you need to log in anyways in game, the players who have been given access can join company, others can spectate, that way even new players could see what is goin on, and see some advertise how to get to play(join n-ice, and so on)

anyhow one play with player and you can see if he know how to play, then just read the guidlines and reply on forum, that yes i have red em thru and he should be allowed to play. since its restricted access, if he screws up his access will be taken away, as simple as that.


The trikyest part in the whole concept would be, how you reward the players, as this community is largely built upon score system, players exept to get some score there aswell. but since the effort on players is difrent, i have no idea how to hand out scores.



If holding up such server 24/7 seems unreasonable, at least make it some sort of event thing, once or twice a week, 24H goal, difrent goal every play.

[Kadar]

This is a completely viable option. We would just need some input on the settings that you would want the server to be and we can tweak them to see the best options.

On the idea of changing the map amd goal we can hold a bimonthly or monthly poll on what the server settings should be for the upcoming time period. For the scoring system, we have the option of weighting the scores per server so we can play around with some ideas to make sure the score is worth the effort. Feel free to contact us on irc or by the forums for this idea. I've been throwing around the idea of this for a little while

[McTc]

so how would this proceed?

what i would play for example, citybuild server 1024x1024 and 100k city as goal(could also be up to 500k). the use of trains, rv-s, airplanes shouldnt be very restricted, as such city would need alot of traffic in all forms. also maybe throw in some mods, FIRS for example, so city would need more than just passangers, mail and goods. also i would love to see long vehicles mod, since at some point when the city is all over the place, you need to start thinking of RV-s anyhow. to reach the goal it should take at least 24h in my opinion, so people all over the world could contribute, and scoring system shouldnt need people to be logged in to get score(as it would take long time).

Also wonder if there is such mod or script for player to be able to see who built that part of track or that vehicle. as i know the server logs everything, but to bring that up as query to tell him or her not to do that or just to see who did this great station.

I have no idea what resources it would take from server and if such thing as i explained is possible, but i would play in such server

[imus]

I don't think the scoring is needed. Look at the CB games for example ... they don't give a score for the moment and people still play them because they like the concept.
This type of coop play is something different as well, so as long as the general idea is good, people will play even without scores.

About the script for logging: it logs everything based on the player, so we indeed have the information. All admins are able to check the logs to see if a player who claims to have done something is telling the truth ... but that is about it :p
Looking up who did something based on only a square is difficult.
Programming stuff to bring it back up is probably not going to happen any time soon... as the persons required to do that are already working on other things first + openttd is just a hobby for everyone, private live comes first So it's a still a really good thing to make such suggestions, so that if they do find the time to do it and like the idea, they can have fun to figure out how to implement such things ... but I don't expect that to happen any time soon ...

That said, the server itself shouldn't be a problem Since you also found your way to the IRC, I suggest you try to convince alex that it is a good idea, so that he, Kadar and some other active admins can agree on what needs to be done to get that server going Might need to wait till after the exam period to reach the right people tho ...

[McTc]

Well here goes

As for first game and for testing here's what i propose

Climate: sub tropical
map: 512 x 512
industries: medium
citys: medium
TL 7
no boats
50-100 planes
lots of trucks/trains
newgrf's: Long vehicles

goal:world population, like alot, maybe 2m to start out, (openttdcoop managed over 3M in first, 6M in second try in 512x512)
playtime: 1970-goal is reached(or if found goal unreachable) in general, since we dont use autopause, the game should take about 24h to reach goal.

since we all use the same company to reach common goal, but to somewhat give individual challenge aswell, each player could take a city, or two to develop and look after. simple renameing so people would understand who is looking after that city. the common goal is to get world population up, but this mini goal, to see whose city will develop to biggest will maybe add a little extra kick to the game.

some of us maybe don't like to citybuild, don't you worry. theres also a need to produce cargo, food, goods....but all that should be shared, so in my dream world it goes something like one-two place to produce stuff, and then deliver them out evenly. theres no point to deliver all the goods to one city whyle others need them to grow aswell. so even if you take it as some kind of small contest to build your city to biggest, then keep in mind the common goal of world population, your city alone cant reach it, so share the stuff.

And for god sake, use signs. co-op is like programming, you need to comment your code for other person to understand. same goes here, sign the purpose, the drop stations, pickup stations, plans, and so on, so if someone log in in the middle of game, he could easily understand what is going on and where and what is needed to be done. etc you need to log out, leave a sign that "need more grain to be delivered" so the next player can see that and do that.

Also share the built out network, theres no need for new line for something, if theres existing line which isnt used to its full capacity.
Waypoints help out alot and also use shared orders


PS. maybe locking out entire server isn't the best idea, let there be spectators who can see and become jeleous and feel the urge to join the community, but to get in the company, only selected people.

[imus]

some settings that you missed but are pretty important: (might edit later if we think of other settings that we missed)

* no funding of towns: it feels like cheating on the goal
* funding industries: secondary everywhere, primary thru prospecting only
* allow multiple industries per town (2 banks could be usefull if diamonds needed
* 1 or 2 edges of map water (so oil rigs can pop up if wells run dry)
* station spread: 10? (5 times double platform on goods/food/... pickup) maybe bigger?

exact number of trains trucks? 2k maybe? (only 1 company so should be possible if needed, no?)

[Andreas]

Yeah, you both missed a small detail: the citybuilder script only sets demands for a claimed town. Also you can only claim 1 town per company. Therefore all other towns will only require 1t of food and 1.000 lt of water to grow. Other than providing that and having 5 serviced stations, there is nothing you can do to speed up groth...

I would therefore suggest to change the goal to growing 1 town to a huge population or choose a different goal alltogether

[McTc]

well even tho town only need 1t of food ,1000lt of water to grow in tropical, it is a challenge itself to deliver that to all 50 or so towns monthly, not to mention that there is only so many water pumps ond food should be produced in 1-2 factorys across map. also havin 5 station in each 50 towns, means 250 stations to set up and put buses/trains to serve them. now add there cargo and passanger delivery, which impact the growth rate, the more pax the faster it grow, i believe theres plenty to do.
not to mention if it means 2m goal and if there's lets say 50 towns, means each town should be built up to 40k population. thats alot of pax to be transported to get there. and to add there, even if we get 10 people to play that server, means each player should take care for 4-5 towns instead of 1-2

so therefore maybe that map should have up to 100 towns, to somewhat ease the citybuild part(not all towns grow as fast and some start of just 100 pop), on other hand it create more hassle to deliver stuff.
also newgrf part, maybe some new trainset to introduce TGV-s or shinkazen-s for express pax delivery(dont remember exactly which trainset had them)

[imus]

Good point there McTc. Main concern here is city building all over the map, preferably to near impossible proportions, so this would required enormous amounts of everything using the script anyway. So 1t food, 1k lt of water monthly isn't that bad.

initial city size, growth rate and number of towns turning into cities should be tweaked, as I got no idea what good settings would be.

for the NewGRFs, try to look up the exact names so we can include them, they HAVE to be available from ingame download (or we would lose the few players we would get anyway :p). Preferably tested in solo game first, so you know they are what you expect them to be ^.^